Identifying electronic devices in the form or product or brand names, company logos etc.—expressed in simplified terms below by the term graphic information—supports identification of electronic devices with the manufacturers of these devices. Mostly this type of identifying information is printed or stamped on the housing enclosing the electronic device.
With the current market economy dynamics for marketing electronic devices, especially communication terminals, the need often arises to modify the graphic information even after delivery to a customer or to only provide this information once the device has been delivered.
In the case of areas of an organization equipped with communication terminals—for example a company, an authority or an hotel—a situation often occurs in which these communication terminals are to be provided with graphic information identifying the organization—instead of or in addition to the manufacturer's graphic information. Customer requests of this nature, to use the technologies described above for applying the graphic information can, for economic reasons, only be met if the organization orders a specific minimum number of communication terminals.
A further limitation of permanently-applied graphic information on electronic devices relates manufacturing of electronic devices by an OEM (“Original Equipment Manufacturer”) for a reseller whose logo is to be applied in place of the OEM logo. With permanently applied graphic information account thus needs to be taken, in designing the housing, of the reseller to whom the finished product is to be delivered. This means a not inconsiderable logistical effort on the part of the OEM and, for the reasons given above, is only cost effective for the manufacturer if a specific minimum number of units are accepted.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,870,156 discloses a liquid crystal display which has an otherwise transparent foil with non-reflecting patterns. For backlighting of the liquid crystal display the non-reflecting patterns appear as visible graphic information—e.g. containing a company logo—within the display area of the liquid crystal display. The graphic information can no longer be changed once it has been defined on the foil and the liquid crystal display has been installed.
The technical article by Verhiest, J.; van Daele, K.: “Extended Use of Telephone Display Function”, in: Siemens Technik Report, Volume 4 No. 13, October 2001, pages 69–70 discloses a method for an extended use of a telephone display. The article describes how messages—represented as pictures or text—can be distributed, especially for promotional purposes, from a network operator to a registered subscriber. These messages are displayed temporarily, e.g. during call setup and require an external service provider, for example the network operator. This network operator supplies a plurality of subscribers who have their own communication terminals in each case, i.e. can install or exchange these terminals themselves.
The method is therefore unsuitable for long-term display of a company logo for example.
With mobile communication terminals a display of a network operator with whom the mobile communication terminal is registered in the form of textual or graphical information in the display is known. The name of the company or OEM reseller is generally stamped or printed on the housing. The graphic or textual information shown in the display, the “network operator logo” is normally stored on a card in the telephone—also known by experts as the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card.
The published European patent specification EP 0896491 A1 discloses a method for displaying network operator logos on mobile communication terminals in which, using the information stored on a SIM card, a display type is transferred to the network operator and the latter transmits a network operator logo adapted to the relevant display.
In addition a method for displaying temporarily stored graphic information in the form of animated sequences is known from published European patent specification EP 0831629 A2.
The graphic information mentioned at the beginning of this document cannot be displayed using any of the three methods described above, since an operator or reseller does not have access to the type of the graphic information—transferred by the network operator and/or stored on the SIM card. Furthermore it is not technically practicable for a network operator to transmit graphic information for different user groups. Thus these methods, for similar reasons to those disclosed in the technical article “Extended Use of Telephone Display Function” cannot be applied.